Carlos Lehder - Norman's Cay

Norman's Cay

In the late 1970s, the Lehder-Jung partnership began to diverge, due to some combination of Lehder's megalomania, and Lehder's secret scheming to secure a personal Bahamian island as a complete all-purpose headquarters for his operations.

That island was Norman's Cay, which at that point consisted of a marina, a yacht club, approximately 100 private homes, and an air strip. In 1978, Lehder began buying up property and harassing and threatening the island's residents. At one point, a yacht was found drifting off the coast with the corpse of one of its owners aboard. He is estimated to have spent $4.5 million on the island in total.

As Lehder chased away the local population and began to assume total control of the island, Norman's Cay became Lehder's lawless private fiefdom. By this time, George Jung had been forced out of the operation, and international criminal financier Robert Vesco had allegedly become a partner. Jung used his prior connections to take up a more modest line of independent smuggling for Escobar, and stayed out of Lehder's way.

From 1978 through 1982, the Cay was the Caribbean's main drug smuggling hub and a tropical hideaway and playground for Lehder and associates. Cocaine was flown in from Colombia by jet and then reloaded into the small aircraft that then distributed it to locations in Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas. Lehder was believed to receive 1 kilo on every 4 that was transported through Norman's Cay.

Lehder built a 3,300-foot (1,000 m) runway protected by radar, bodyguards and Doberman attack dogs for the fleet of aircraft under his command. In the glory days of his operation, 300 kilograms of cocaine would arrive on the island every day, and Lehder's personal wealth mounted into the billions. Indeed, he made so much wealth that on two occasions he offered to pay the Colombian External debt. In 1978 he made an offer to do so to President Alfonso López Michelsen, in exchange for a free space for drug trafficking and in 1982 through Pablo Escobar, by then a Congressman, he did so again, this time in an attempt to prevent his extradition.